


Prompt: After Death

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [131]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Mentions of Murder, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, severe codependency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 11:29:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11668230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: If he had not died she would be as she ever was. Unafraid, undaunted, immeasurably powerful. All things he has known her to be at her core, all things he has worked towards seeing her be all their lives.And yet, now he is fearful of it, fearful of her defiance of the world, fearful of what she might do. She has sacrificed to gods and sacrificed a god, killed people for the single, simple reason that his life meant more to her than theirs did.





	Prompt: After Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nanyoky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Prompt: Unto Death](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11639634) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts). 



> Written for Nanyoky for a prompt readable on my tumblr [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/163648917520/prompt-sequel-to-unto-death-the-teams-reaction). Sequel to [Unto Death](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11639634).

 

 **i.**  
“You did it on purpose,” Steve says when they settle back in on Earth. “Every death you caused, that was no accident. Every man you killed, every broken neck, every crushed rib cage...” He looks at her as though he is seeing her for the first time. “Wanda, how many people did you kill?”

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
The team fears her now, more than they ever feared her before. This is more than the knowledge of the mere  _potential_  of her powers, more than the memory of her scarlet scratching out their fears.

She has killed people, willfully, meaningfully, with no sense of guilt or shame to dog her footsteps. If it came to it, for Pietro, she would kill again, as many times as it takes to keep him safe, keep him alive, keep him well.

If the life of Thanos fails to sustain him, if Hel’s death is not enough, Wanda will sacrifice over and over for as long as Pietro cares to live.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
Wanda walks tall and unafraid. She holds her head high, never ducks her chin or drops her gaze. She knows what she has done and what it means, knows the others fear her but, “I cannot control their fear,” she whispers to Pietro, fingers dancing scarlet over his palm. “Only my own.”

Pietro has never wanted to see his sister afraid, see her sad or forced into weakness by the world, but something in her fierceness here almost  _scares_  him, but for the fact he knows it was he who made her this way.

If he had not died she would be as she ever was. Unafraid, undaunted, immeasurably powerful. All things he has known her to be at her core, all things he has worked towards seeing her be all their lives.

And yet, now he is fearful of it, fearful of her defiance of the world, fearful of what she might do. She has sacrificed to gods and sacrificed a god, killed people for the single, simple reason that his life meant more to her than theirs did.

He has always known they would do anything for each other but now, seeing it, it sends throttling fear curling around his heart.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
“I won’t repent,” says Wanda. “I cannot undo what I did. I would not even if I could, those lives are all that kept Pietro living,  _thriving_ , until Thanos and Hela arrived.”

Vision watches her, hands of vibranium and flesh folded over each other. “Wanda,” he says, voice soft and earnest, gentle and oh, oh so naive. “Wanda you killed all those people for  _one_  person’s sake. Tens of lives, all unique and individual, all which-”

“Attacked us,” Wanda interrupts. “They attacked us first, every one of them.”

Vision stares at her, as though unsure of how to make her grasp the point. “But not all meant to kill us. Must someone only attack us to deserve death? What makes us worth so much more?”

Wanda looks at him, looks at the sky, looks deep into his eyes. “It is not  _us,”_  she says, “That are worth so much more. It is  _Pietro.”_

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
Pietro sits in on the edges of their meetings, shimmering into shaking, nervous, anxiety-wracked blue, hands blurring on one of the innumerable fidget toys Sam gave him before... Before.

“It’s Wanda,” he whispers when they finally tease it all out of him. “I do not think she is sane. Stable. I do not think she has been since I died.”

He does not look at them, but down at the toy in his hands, moving so fast it is a blur. His shoulders are hunched up defensively. 

“I will live yet,” he says. “Thanos’ death and Hela’s, I am stronger than I have ever been, and it shows no sign of fading. But Wanda is...” He looks up at them, his gaze grazing past theirs in momentary contact. “Something is wrong.”

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
Pietro grows oddly distant. He is still there for her of course, always at her side if she but thinks his name, but there is always one of the fidget toys Sam gave him in his hands, blurring into an indecipherable mess, as indecipherable as his thoughts, speeding faster and faster until she can no longer read them.

He is fretting over something, something he does not want to talk to her about, not yet.

Wanda does not push, but she worries too.

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
“What do we do?” asks Pietro. He’s still sat at the edges of their meetings, by Sam or Clint who show him a rough kind of affection, or by Vision who sits there unafraid of his bloodstained hands. He is at the edges, but he is much calmer than he was. The fidget toy in his hands is spinning absently, his hands turning to feel the odd sway it gains when held in the air. “What  _can_  we do? A thought alone might warn her.”

There is not much they can do, not against Wanda’s power, not if they faced Wanda’s wrath. Not if Wanda thought them a threat to her brother.

“We do what we can,” says Natasha. “We can’t do more and to do less would be...”

“An abdication of duty,” says Steve.

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
Wanda is meditating when she feels Pietro’s mind at the doorway. She curls her cloud of scarlet in, inch by curlicued inch until is all tucked back into her veins, tucked up between her ribs. Only then does she open her eyes and look at her brother.

He stands in the doorway, watchful and waiting, patient as he only is for her. His mind is spinning beyond her scope, but the fidget toy in his hand dangles loosely, no longer an output for anxious energy.

“Wanda,” he says, voice soft, a touch sad. His free hand extends to her. “Walk with me?”

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
Pietro walks in silence. It is not a comfortable silence, there is the knowledge that, in a way, this might be a betrayal to Wanda, even as he knows she would never hate him, never hurt him, no matter what. They are half each other’s souls, after all. To kill one is to kill the other, to hurt one is to hurt the other.

And they would never hurt themselves, for each other’s sakes.

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
Pietro stops before a plain wooden door, in a part of the facility Wanda barely knows. They had tried to make her come here once, after Pietro was- after- 

But she had not. She does not know why Pietro would bring her here now.

Pietro slips the fidget toy into his pocket, takes her hand in his. His thumb grazes over the back of her hand.

“There is something wrong with us,” he says. “I think it has been wrong since we were ten, since the shell. It is not... it is not normal for people to build a whole life out of one another, to rely on each other so much that one death will kill the other.”

“We are not normal,” Wanda whispers. Her hand is white-knuckled in his as she stares at the door.

Pietro looks at her, looks back at the door. “We were once,” he says. “I think, after everything, after I have died and come back and we sacrificed a  _god..._  I think we should try to be a little normal.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
